Community Newsletter: Q&A: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how?
- 2/14/08 3:56 PM
Another angle
by Tech Boy Stevo - 2/8/08 5:02 PM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Rather than try to repartion a HD that is already too small (and risk corrupting the data that is on it) - buy a 2nd HD, make it the slave, and all your storage problems are solved.
Just my thoughts!
Oops ...
by Tech Boy Stevo - 2/8/08 5:08 PM In reply to: Another angle by Tech Boy StevoMy bad - did not read down far enough. Never mind!!!
I used Symantec's Partition Magic
by treading - 2/8/08 5:54 PM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I had the same issue and rather than fool around with it I just ordered Partition Magic 8.0 from Symantec. It did the job and I did not have to worry about losing any programs or data.
removing partition of hard drive.
by clayton m. ramil - 2/8/08 6:06 PM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
well, ist thing for me to do is: remove or copy the content of your hardrive to another hardrive.. then reformat.. make a selection of single partition... that is the easy way.. that may take a whole day work...philippines
GParted
by georgearchibald - 2/8/08 7:00 PM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Here are the assumptions I am working with:
You have a Primary hard drive with 80Gb total. you probaby partioned the drive to have a System partition and a program partition. You made the assumption that 20Gb would be enough room for the OS, cache file and driver specific files leaving 60Gb for programs etc. I will also assume you are using Windows XP/2003/or Vista.
While the instructions you have been given are good. They may not be complete and they also cost money. Being very cheap, I have done this several times without spending a dime.
1. If you haven't done anything with the secondary drive yet, start by formating it. use quick format and I recommend NTFS.
2. Copy all of your D: drive to the new drive.
3. After you are sure that all of the data is copied over correctly, go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management.
4. Right click on your D: drive select Change Drive Letters and Path.
5. Select any available drive letter.
6. Right Click E: Drive (if thet is you 250Gb drive) and change it to D:.
7. Try a few programs and if it seems right, then reboot just to make sure.
8. When you computer is rebooted and you are confident that you haven't lost anything. Download GParted. The download is a small ISO burn this ISO to a CD. This is a small linux kernel that only contains Disk Utilities. It operates exclusively off of the CD freeing all of your hard drive including the all important Disk Boot Partition so that it may be edited. Reboot with this CD in the drive.
9. If necessary, make sure your CD is set as boot device.
10. GParted will have some language selection etc etc. it is all very self explainatory and usualy the enter key is all you'll need.
11. Select the drive (80GB)
12. Select the partition you want to delete (60GB). Delete Partion.
13. Select the 20GB and hit the resize button. Push the size to the limit.
14. Press the shutdown button. select Eject and shutdown. the cd will eject and the machine will reboot.
15. when XP starts it will be confused with the Disk size not matching what the registry says so it will start a scan disk. Let it complete and it wil set it all right.
Gparted ISO is at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828
Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition?
by Big Gee - 2/8/08 8:02 PM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Richard....
If your laptop is anything like mine, and I believe that this is the ways most manufacturers are going now, the D drive is used to hold a system image of your laptop in order to restore it in the event that Windows dies. They do this so that they do not have to ship Windows itself, or even restore disks on optical media any more.
Having said that then, I don't think that if this is the case, you would want to delete that partition unless you are prepared to buy your self a copy of Windows to replace the current version you have now, and also any software programs that came with your laptop that you use, and for which there is also no program CDs. These too would be on the restore partition, along with any crapware that was also installed on your laptop at the time of delivery. So if you delete this partion, then be aware that you won't have any backup OS/SW unless you off load it to another external HDD first. Then you need to worry about how to boot from it to reinstall should the need arise.
It also appears that this partion contains an Image of the orginal installation and does not have individually accessable files. Something else to consider.
I'm running WinXP media center on my PC and the D partition takes up 12.6 GB of space, with only 770 MB free. Hardly enough worry about reclaiming, unless you want the whole partion as mentioned above. I would assume yours is about the same.
Try right mousing on each drive (C & D) and select the properties option from the popup menu, to see how big each partition is and what percentage of free space remains on each. You may find that perhaps you need to upgrade the entire harddrive to a bigger one, if when doing the steps below you are not much better off.
You an always try to recoup space on your C drive by doing the following:
1. remove any programs that you no longer use or don't want. If any crapware remains from the original installation at the factory, now would be a good time to remove it. Use the add remove programs option inside control panel to remove any unwanted programs.
2. Make sure you clean out all you temporary files that have accumulated over time. Do this inside your browser (I use IE) under tools--internet options. Delete the cookies and temporary files in there if you haven' already done so. Its a daily practice with me.
3. from the start menu select run and type in %temp% to list any remaining temp files on your PC. Sort by date, then select all except todays, and delete them. If any come up cannot be delete, unhighlight it only, and delete the rest. Rinse and repeat till all you can delete are gone (including any dated today).
4. select start run again, and this time type in prefetch. Delete all these files as well.
Now that you have cleaned out as much as possible (for now), run a defrag on the c drive. Once defragged this will help improve peformance as well.
If after all this, you still want to delete this partion, then follow the instructions given in response to the orginal post.
Hope this helps a bit.
Cheers!
Garry
re: repartitioning the C drive
by ninja660 - 2/8/08 8:35 PM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It's strange that amongst all these fancy solutions only a handful had suggested backing up your data that you didn't want to lose. A few people had also forgotten to mention that when you use a tool to expand a partition using for example Partition Magic, that you make sure the other free space on the drive is vacant (I mean EMPTY!) because it will overwrite anything on the other free space. Granted, Partition Magic does include (or at least it used to include a graphic of how the new partition would look after the edit.)
I have used some of these tools and some other things that I have run in to - is that Partition Magic had problems with the drive geometry that the system BIOS reported and when I used it, I actually split files in 2 that I wanted to keep (this was on an older machine and wound up destroying the drive. Use these tools as if you are opening Pandora's Box if you choose to use a partition editing package. Very carefully!
One other tool I had noticed that people had forgotten to mention is Norton's Ghost - it can create a sector by sector backup of a drive and either write it to a media such as CDROM, another drive or what have you. It takes a bit of time, but creates a very high quality image backup. One feature I liked about Ghost was that I could pump the image down the wire to a second workstation (via boot disk) and then reclone the harddrive as fast as the network could handle the data transfer. If you want a 99% safe option back it up and repartition. If you want to use the repartitioning software, make sure you take heed of the warnings that are enclosed with the software. And of course, BACK UP YOUR DATA, because after partiion edits ... File losses are normally irrecoverable. One other thing too, if the drive is still under warranty - some drive makers may not cover damage done by drive edits (ie: if it causes head crash)
for remove partition
by yogeshdl - 2/8/08 8:46 PM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
put down xp set up cd in to cd raw drive then restart pc then go to format menu and then follow the path and then select partition and press D for delete there your partition is remove
Removing a partition with XP
by mrmiran - 2/8/08 9:48 PM In reply to: for remove partition by yogeshdlYou can try it, but it won't work. Metadata and network information, including admin and user accounts, will stay on the HD and come back to haunt you later... even though you may not see it when you first reboot.
Windows will NOT remove an NTFS file nor will it remove the metadata on the disk. I know... Windows says it deletes the partition... but it does not. I had to write a paper on this in college... and yes, I got an "A" on it.
As we speak I have an old PC with XP Pro on it sitting in my basement which was put through a reformat and reinstall using only the Windows CD. It worked for awhile, but then all the old files magically reappeared, along with the old user and admin accounts. Then XP got confused and could not figure out where explorer.exe was and it now boots to a blue-screen-of-death... Oddly enough the network could still access the shared files on the hard drive.
I still recommend using delpart.exe to completely delete the NTFS partition and remove the metadata before reinstalling Windows. It works great... takes just a minute... and saves a lot of headaches later... and it's free.
2 HDs
by Tech Boy Stevo - 2/8/08 8:53 PM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hey Richard -
Here is what I would do. I would flip the hard drives. Make the 250G HD the primary one, and make the 80G the slave.
Reinstall XP on the 250G HD as it is probably much faster than the 80G HD. A clean install will make you as fast as the day you bought your machine, with the bonus of a faster HD. Leave the 80G HD alone, as all the files will remain on that drive, plus in the event of the 250G HD failing, you can revert back to the smaller HD, with your system already intact.
This way costs you zero dollars. Just changing the pins on the back of the HDs you already have. The 250G becomes the Master, the 80G becomes the slave.
(Make sure you backup your 250G HD first.)
Partition removal......
by jrszabo - 2/8/08 9:01 PM In reply to: 2 HDs by Tech Boy StevoUse Partition Magic 8.0 (now by Symantec) to remove partitions. I've done this successfully a number of times!
Removing an NTFS partition
by mrmiran - 2/8/08 9:36 PM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It's easy... There are two ways. First you can buy "Partition Magic" and do whatever you want with the partitions. It's an awesome program, but not free. I would still back up all files first though!
Personally... I'm cheap and I would just back up all your files, then run delpart.exe.
Just google "delpart.exe" and you will find many places to download the file. Put it onto a bootable floppy or bootable CD and run it.
Delpart is an old DOS program and will delete your NTFS partition AND the metadata on it as well. Once it is finished just run fdisk, format, and install Windows as usual.
I hear Microsoft has their own version called "diskpart" but I have not used it... and I KNOW delpart works great.
Best of luck!
Mike
can we remove partition
by djbc2005 - 2/9/08 12:11 AM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi if you want to remove your partition you maust have a nother partition (d: driver) to remove it( or remove your data on cd's ) and have another partition to add to c: driver (d: or e: driver) and in the bigning of istal(windows xp) you add the free partition to c: or change partition wich you find and install your new system
Something else to remember for items installed on the D:
by lgraber - 2/9/08 1:26 AM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi All,
I would do this a very carefully. First of all I would not do anything to old drive at all as this is your backup/main drive until the new one is operating.
Mount the new 250 G drive as E (on the secondary IDE cable).ie the old 80 G drive will have the primary partition of C: and the additional partition of D: when the system starts up.
1) Boot under a DOS Boot Disk with Symatec 'Ghost' on it.
2) Clone the C: Partition (partition 1 on disk 1) to the new drive (E:) which is partition 1 on disk 2, this will not only move a copy of the c: drive to the e: drive, and it will also format the rest of the 250G drive as NTFS for you (I am assuming both old partitions are this format)....
3) Reboot under Wiindows and copy all file from the old D: drive to a new directory on the 'e:' drive called for example /DRVD.
4) Create a CMD file that runs a statment that uses the SUBST command to substitute c:/DRVD D:. Run this in your startup so that the system creates a virtual D: drive on each startup using the c:/DRVD directory.
5) Remove the old drive and make the new drive primary. This subst command means all registery entries etc that pointed to D: on the old system will still find their files etc. It will be fooled into thinking that it still has a D Drive whilst you use all the space on your new larger C: drive (when you reboot with the new drive in the Primary IDE cable it will be the C: Drive automatically)...Your new 250G C: Drive can then grow to use all the new space whilst the D: drive will only grown by what you want it to ie. anything you install to the D: drive will actually be written to c:/DRVD.
reply
by phuiyein - 2/9/08 1:26 AM In reply to: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Erm, u can try format the hard disk back as in u delete both partition in the windows setup and combine it back.
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